Wednesday, January 23rd 1. Quiz on the Chase Scenes.

2. End of the novel.

It’s Snowplow Mailbox Hockey Day: It’s wintertime and

time for snowplow drivers everywhere to see how many rural mailboxes they can

knock over. Twenty extra points for boosting one into the next township!

Moby-Dick Final Reading

1. The Epic Chase – A Few Key Lines

2. The Final line of Ch. 135 – Explication

3. Discussion of The EpilogueT

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Connecting the Events of the Chase

• 1. “There she blows! – there she blows! A hump like a snow hill. It is Moby Dick (523)!

• “I only! None of ye could have raised the White Whale first” (524).

• “Soon all the boats but Starbuck’s were dropped; all the boat-sails set – all the paddles plying… and Ahab at the onset. A pale death glimmer lit up Fedallah’s sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth” (524).

DAY 1

Connecting the Events of the Chase

• “As they neared him, the ocean grew still more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a noon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter came so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling hump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated thing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy, greenish foam. ” (524).

• Compare with “The Grand Armada”: Ishmael in the center, perfect calm, isolated, while circles of frenzied activity go on around him

DAY 1

Connecting the Events of the Chase

• “But suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom. It was Moby Dick's open mouth and scrolled jaw; his vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea. The glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble tomb; and giving one side-long sweep with his steering oar, Ahab whirled the craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon Fedallah to change places with him, went forward to the bows, and seizing Perth's harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars and stand by to stern” (526).

DAY 1

Connecting the Events of the Chase

• “Dragged into Stubb's boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white brine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Ahab's bodily strength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body's doom: for a time, lying all crushed in the bottom of Stubb's boat, like one trodden under foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from him, as desolate sounds from out ravines” (528-9).

DAY 1

Connecting the Events of the Chase

• "Aye, Sir," said Starbuck drawing near, "'tis a solemn sight; an omen, and an ill one."

"Omen? omen? - the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to man, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and give an old wives' darkling hint. - Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles of one thing; Starbuck is Stubb reversed, and Stubb is Starbuck; and ye two are all mankind; and Ahab stands alone among the millions of the peopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold - I shiver! - How now? Aloft there! D'ye see him? Sing out for every spout, though he spout ten times a second" (530)!

DAY 1

Connecting the Events of the Chase

• “The triumphant halloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as - much nearer to the ship than the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead - Moby Dick bodily burst into view” (534)!

• "Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!" cried Ahab, "thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand” (535 ).

DAY 2

Connecting the Events of the Chase

• “Ahab's yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards Heaven by invisible wires, - as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly from the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against its bottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell again - gunwale downwards - and Ahab and his men struggled out from under it, like seals from a seaside cave” (536).

DAY 2

Connecting the Events of the Chase

• "Aye! and all splintered to pieces, Stubb! - d'ye see it. - But even with a broken bone, old Ahab is untouched; and I account no living bone of mine one jot more me, than this dead one that's lost. Nor white whale, nor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Ahab in his own proper and inaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any mast scrape yonder roof? - Aloft there! which way“ (537).

• But quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was nowhere to be found.

"Aye, Sir," said Stubb - "caught among the tangles of your line - I thought I saw him dragging under “ (538).

DAY 2

Connecting the Events of the Chase

• "In Jesus' name no more of this, that's worse than devil's madness. Two days chased; twice stove to splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil shadow gone - all good angels mobbing thee with warnings: - what more wouldst thou have? - Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he swamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the sea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh, - Impiety and blasphemy to hunt him more" (538).

DAY 2

Connecting the Events of the Chase

“Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee an$ me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine. - Stand round me, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered lance; propped up on a lonely foot. 'Tis Ahab - his body's part; but Ahab's soul's a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel strained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a gale; and I may look so. But ere I break, ye'll hear me crack; and till ye hear that, know that Ahab's hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe ye, men, in the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore! For ere they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface; then rise again, to sink for evermore. So with Moby Dick - two days he's floated - to- morrow will be the third. Aye, men, he'll rise once more, - but only to spout his last” (539)!

DAY 2

Connecting the Events of the Chase

“Oh! Ahab," cried Starbuck, "not too late is it, even now, the third day, to desist. See! Moby Dick seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him“ (546).

DAY 3

Connecting the Events of the Chase

“at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that ethereal thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it (551).

DAY 3

“Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago” (552).